Friday, January 04, 2008

Watercolor Figure Portrait Demo 2

Several more layers of sepia have been added and blended. I love the reference photo as the pose is so interesting and the lighting is great but the quality is very poor so this has been a little more slow going than I had hoped as I really have to squint to see the details. Nearly every time I start a piece of artwork I vow that I will not use poor reference material... I recently purchased a new digital camera that takes amazing photos so hopefully this will be the last one I struggle through ;) I blow the images up in photoshop or picassa which is free from google and alter the lights and darks so that I can see more detail which really helps. The image pixelates but if I squint I can get a better idea of how the shapes fit together. I bought a lightbox for the same purpose a year ago just before I discovered it works better on the computer ;) I now use my lightbox mostly as an expensive prop for my painting board, hmm. After looking at the adjusted reference material on the computer I notice that a portion of the hair was hidden in shadows so I will need to adjust that but overall the underpainting is complete.